NO, I’m not talking about my cooking. –Shut up.

I’m talking about a restaurant my friend Jane and I went to last month … or maybe the month before. I lose track. Anyway, it’s a Mexican restaurant on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky: Sol Aztecas. Not LOS Aztecas; that’s a different one.

So we went there for lunch, and the food was standard items but MOST tasty, and the beer was good, too. But check out what was staring at me over Jane’s shoulder. Jolly, eh? The writing at the top, in case you can’t read it, says, “El Dia de los Muertos” — The Day of the Dead. Just what any customer wants to see in a restaurant, am I right? Still, the dead guys do look very festive, and it is written in Isaiah 22:13, “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Makes you want to order dessert. Or at least another beer.

When I’m dead, if somebody in some anthropology lab somewhere is working on my bones for some reason, she — or he — has my full permission to paint bright patterns all over my skull. Be sure to stick a Hello Kitty in there, somewhere.

There was also this detail on the wall next to me. It is NOT appropriate that it was cracked! Stop that!

This is a faked-up detail intended to make a place look older than it is, as if the stucco had crumbled and exposed the underlying brick. Very Storybook Style. Just one thing, about this one, though: It’s a plastic panel of brickwork glued on OVER the paint. Looks great from a distance, but kind of surreal up close. Maybe skip that second beer, after all.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character is unexpectedly reminded of his or her mortality.

MA